Nvidia updates mobile Quadro FX graphics chip line

Shader Model 3.0 and PCI Express at last

Nvidia this week added another member to its Quadro FX Go mobile line-up, at last bringing Shader Model 3.0 and PCI Express support to its workstation graphics processor chip family.

Nvidia says the new chip's updated architecture offers twice the performance of the previous model. The 1400 certainly doubles the memory bus and capacity of its predecessor, the Quadro FX Go 1000 to 256-bit and 256MB, respectively. The 1400's wider bus and faster memory clock yield 19.4GBps of memory bandwidth to the 1000's 9.4GBps.

In addition to DirectX 9.0c support, the 1400 doubles the full-screen anti-aliasing level to 8x and adds rotated-grid AA. The chip also incorporates, for the first time in a mobile workstation graphics chip, Nvidia's fifth-generation PowerMizer energy conservation system.

The company quoted ViewPerf 8.0.1 benchmarks for the 1400, which scored 22.56 for sw-01, 27.90 for ugs-04 and 31.58 for 3dsmax-03. The 1000 scored 11.62, 12.98 and 20.64, respectively, for the three tests, though Nvidia admitted that they were taken on a machine with a 3.2GHz P4 rather than the 3.6GHz P4 system used to test the 1400. However, both machines were equipped with 2GB of memory and were running Nvidia's version 78.81 drivers, the company said.

Nvidia also noted that notebooks incorporating the 1400 are available from Dell, Alienware, Boxx and Eurocom. ®